Old Swiss Confederacy

The Old Swiss Confederacy was a confederation of independent small Swiss states that existed from 1307 to 1798. The confederation emerged in central Switzerland, and it later expanded to include the cities of Zurich and Bern by the mid-14th century. The rural and urban communes enjoyed imperial immediacy in the Holy Roman Empire, and it established itself as a regional power after the Burgundian Wars of the 1470s. After the Swabian War of 1499, Switzerland gained nominal independence from the Empire. Switzerland In 1513, the number of cantons rose to thirteen, and many Swiss soldiers served privately as mercenaries during the Italian Wars and other early modern conflicts, creating the famous "Swiss Pikemen". In 1647, under threat of the Thirty Years' War, Switzerland pledged its neutrality, and it became fully independent from the Holy Roman Empire in 1648. In 1798, the confederacy was brought to an end as the result of an invasion by the French First Republic during the French Revolutionary Wars, with the French revolutionaries establishing the "Helvetic Republic".